Tascosa grad has GOP cred

Amarilloan takes charge of credentials

The 25-year-old Amarillo native is responsible for making sure all the delegates, press and staff have credentials for the 2008 Republican National Convention scheduled for Sept. 1-4 in Minneapolis.

"We're looking at printing 600,000 credentials," Dryden said. "Every day, they'll have different credentials. All the different areas will have different credentials. We're looking at just trying to maximize seats, so we're just trying to get as many people as possible to participate in the convention."

After graduating from Tascosa High School in 2001, Dryden attended the University of Texas in Austin and graduated in 2005.

"When you're in school four blocks away from the capital, it's hard not to take a little bit of an interest," Dryden said. Just being in the capital surrounded by brilliant people working to make our state a better place was just really inspiring, so it started there and it just continued."

While in Austin she caught the political bug. She interned at Gov. Rick Perry's Appointments Office in the summer of 2003.

Two weeks after graduating, she moved to Washington, D.C., and took a job with Joel Kaplan, who was then deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. She worked with him for a year.

Then the opportunity presented itself to work on the Republican convention in July 2007.

"To work on the convention and move to a city in a unique location is kind of an opportunity that comes around once in a lifetime," she said. "It was just an opportunity I couldn't pass up. To move out here and experience a convention and usher in our nominee into the White House."

Dryden said she doesn't really have a typical day.

"I spent a couple of weeks counting every individual seat in the Xcel Center," Dryden said. "We start looking at different things we need to take into consideration when printing the credentials such as security aspects, transportation aspects, looking at the delegates, the alternate delegates ... it's a neat job because no day is ever the same."

Dryden's parents, Robin and Randy Dryden, live in Amarillo. Robin said she's a very proud mom.

"It's been fun watching her career. She's had a lot of fun and her career's interesting. She actually had her sights set on this right after she went to college," she said.

However, Robin said the rest of the family aren't particularly interested in politics.

"She (Logan) has always been civic-minded and she was always interested in things for the greater good," Robin said. "I think that probably she just grew up knowing that there was a bigger world out there and she wanted to be a part of it."

Logan Dryden said after the convention she'd love to campaign for John McCain.

"I think I'll go where I'm needed," she said. "If our nominee needs people to go out there and help him campaign, I'll do so. My heart is in Texas, so hopefully, I would like to end up back there sooner rather than later."